South Korean documentary “Poetry on Land” is a soothing experience to be cherished for good reasons. While it is lovely to see all those tranquilly beautiful nature landscapes in the documentary, it is also fascinating to observe an old female professional who is a creative mind behind many of these gorgeous sceneries, and you will come to admire how she is willing to keep going as usual despite her old age.

That female professional in question is Jeong Yeong-seon, an 82-year-old lady whom you may have heard about if you have any interest in landscape architecture. For last several decades, Jeong has distinguished herself a lot as one of the best landscape architects in not only South Korea but also the global world. As shown around the end of the documentary, she recently received a prestigious award from the International Federation of Landscape Architect (IFLA) in last year, and that was just one of many recognitions given to this exceptional woman.

The documentary simply looks at a number of various works of her, but it is not so difficult for us to discern her considerable skills coupled with some artistic touches to admire. In case of a garden for the building of one prominent local cosmetic company, many different plants associated with cosmetic are arranged here and there in the garden, and the result is seemingly plain but somehow feels colorfully sublime in addition to providing an organic surrounding environment for the building.

As a first-rate landscape architect, Jeong surely knows a lot about those various local plants in South Korea, and she gladly talks about how she applies that vast knowledge of hers to her works. She has always preferred natural style and mood, and she pays a lot of attention to how her work can be poetically harmonious with its surroundings just like many old traditional Korean gardens. For example, she made sure that her design was effortlessly mixed into the background in case of a little park area surrounding a small stream from the Han River in Seoul, and you will surely appreciate how that park area looks so plain but undeniably relaxing on the whole.

My personal favorite is a rather modest interior garden installed inside one urbane building. Because the building happened to be surrounded by many other buildings, a bunch of tall trees are placed inside the garden for making you feel like being in the middle of a small forest, and there are also a bunch of various local forest plants to accentuate that impression. The overall design may look pretty simple at first, but you may want to savor the resulting atmosphere for a while as sipping a cup of oriental tea. To be frank with you, I am already considering visiting that place someday.

One of most interesting moments in the documentary is how Jeong’s landscape architecture works can look beautiful even during cold and barren winter days. While their leaves are almost gone, those trees still look lovely in their thoughtful arrangement, and they surely look all the more beautiful when they are covered with lots of snow.

Although she does not talk that much about her life and career, Jeong tells a bit about how much she has been enthusiastic about landscape architecture for many years. Even when she was very young, she was quite passionate about plants and landscapes while spending a lot of time around her father’s orchard area, and her modest residence located in some rural region certainly shows that she has never forgotten the root of her lifelong professional passion.

Whenever she works, Jeong simply does simple sketches or writes some notes on those ground plan papers with her pastel pencils, and it goes without saying that she already has clear ideas on what she will do for her latest project. Despite her old age, she is quite active and painstaking in every step of her work progress, and several interviewees in the documentary, each of whom incidentally has a fair amount of professional background, cannot help but show admiration and respect as gladly talking about her impressive professional dedication in front of the camera.

Although it seems to respect Jeong too much to delve more into her private life, the documentary later provides several sweet personal moments between her and her family. Her son, who has also devoted himself to the same professional field since he watched her jobs during his childhood years, has been one of her closest professional associates, and we see how he steadily assists his mother when they look around the spot for her latest project. As a grandmother, Jeong certainly dotes a lot on her grandson, and she willingly shows and teaches him a lot on how precious nature environment is as well as the importance of her works. Her grandson is still a little innocent boy who simply wants to run around a garden designed by his grandmother, but you can easily imagine him following his grandmother and father’s footsteps someday.

In conclusion, “Poetry on Land” is a nice little documentary which did a good job on illuminating Jeong’s considerable lifetime achievements, and director Jung Da-woon presents her interesting human main subject with enough sincerity and admiration. Regardless of how many years are left for her, Jeong is always ready for doing more for our valuable nature environment in South Korea, and I and many other South Korean citizens should certainly appreciate more of her priceless public service of many years.